fromThe Christian Science Monitor
1 week agoExposing the roots of vigilantism that persist today
Both books are deeply researched, providing detailed accounts of the circumstances leading up to the violence, the shootings themselves, and their aftermath. They paint similar pictures of Goetz, a loner who, in Williams' words, was long "frustrated by what he regarded as the city's failures to fight crime and mess." Both authors report that at a 1980 meeting of his building's tenants' association, Goetz shocked his neighbors by using racial epithets to blame Blacks and Hispanics for New York's problems.